The reviews are in for the $180 million production of The Golden Compass, and they’re lackluster at best, which is a pity not just for fans of the novel from which it’s adapted but for New Line Cinema, which was banking on another Lord of the Rings cash cow. Times critic Manohla Dargis calls it flawed and cluttered, although her description of Nicole Kidman ought to sway any dudes reluctant to see a movie starring......

The Todd Haynes Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There has gotten so much press for so long we kept forgetting it wasn't actually released until today! The high-concept Oscar contender, for those who haven’t heard a million times already, features six different actors portraying a Dylan-type character at different stages of his career. It opens today at select theaters but film buffs have been cultivating opinions about the polarizing film since it first screened......

Spiderman, Mortal Kombat, Sonic Underground. No, it's not FOX's Saturday morning line up, it's Terence Taylor's resume. Before jumping into horror, the Brooklyn born author spent over a decade writing and producing children's programming . From his days as one of the few black students at St. John's University, to his years writing Gulah Gulah's Island and Arthur, Taylor's story reveals the seemingly random events that often lead to a career in television and writing,......

Remakes and sequels and genre formula, oh my! February is a great month for releasing exactly what the studios think the people will pay to see and this week's release schedule is a textbook example of this development by marketing focus group strategy. Oh well, doesn't mean Gothamist is ready to give up on moviegoing quite yet. Here's a few suggestions to guide your weekend viewing. Of the offerings that are new in wide release......

Have you seen this trailer? If you haven't seen it in a movie theater, chances are it won't have quite the same oomph. Major kudos need to go to the DreamWorks marketing team for putting together a preview that doesn't even pack its full punch until the words "From Director Woody Allen" pop-up on screen. Everything that comes before looks more like a sequel to last year's Closer than anything Allen has done, certainly in......

Sure, there are lots of big movies opening tomorrow - The Aviator (DiCap flies a plane), Spanglish (Adam Sandler plays a Thomas Keller-like chef - ha! - and Tea Leoni hopes this will make her a star), and Lemony Snicket (okay, the baby biting the table is cute) - but Gothamist's pick for a must-see film this weekend is The Sweet Smell of Success. Sweet Smell is playing as part of Film Forum's Essential Noir......

One of Gothamist's favorite movie columnists, Jeffrey Wells at Movie Poop Shoot, went to the Santa Barbara Film Festival and comes back with an interesting take on three of the discussion panels he attended (about screenwriting, directing, and producing). He notes an excellent exchange about the brilliant Reese Witherspoon-Matthew Broderick film, Election, during a panel about producing, which included producers of 21 Grams, Monster, Lord of the Rings, The Station Agent, and Cold Mountain, moderated......

While Alex Kuczynski's examination of the fondness for the film, Groundhog Day by Jews, Christians, and Buddhists alike is interesting, Gothamist found a major flaw in the article. In the film, arrogant weatherman Phil Connors is faced with living February 2 over and over again, and goes from grumpy and frustrated to slowly living his days more constructively once he realizes he's caught in February 2 forever, thus different religions alight to the concept: Buddhists......

Two great appreciation pieces about Bill Murray: - Andrew Sarris' review of Lost in Translation, bringing up two of our favorites, Tootsie and Groundhog Day - Fametracker's Fame Audit of William James Murray: We second their thought, "Anyone who will go into detail, on the record, about how much he loathes Chevy Chase is someone whose friend we would like to be." All things Bill Murray on Gothamist (except for the noir thing...silly search,......

After seeing Johnny Depp's bravura peroformance in Pirates of the Caribbean and agreeing he is what makes the film, Gothamist started to think about his portrayal of Jack Sparrow. Who is it is based on? Critics have been tripping over themselves tyring to deconstruct it. Some say Keith Richards, who Depp admits he used as inspiration, but Keith meets Pepe Le Pew. Some say drag queen. David Denby offered W.C. Fields, Toshiro Mifune, and Keith......

Sridhar Pappu tells the Hartford Courant about his interview with Jayson Blair - the interview where Blair admits laughing at the Times mea culpa. Pappu got the interview by leaving messages at Blair's apartment; it's interesting that Blair, so far, has agreed to speak to only young writers, like Pappu and Newsweek's Seth Mnookin. Perhaps Blair's advisers realize that younger writers might have more empathy than older veterans. More about Sridhar Pappu, the new second......

The perfect book (or gift, loyal readers) for me, the obsessive-compulsive movie fiend: The New York Times Guide to the Best 1000 Movies Ever Made with reviews from Times critics up till Janet Maslin. (For your fix of current Times critics, go to the New York Times.) And there are lists. I love lists of movies, even if Mike D'Angelo is "aw shucks" about them. And someday, Jake and I will sit down to figure......

Because I have a thing for movies, I am a little in love with Mike D'Angelo who writes film reviews for Time Out New York, because I tend to be a little in love with anyone who writes about them (Stephanie Zacharek, Andrew Sarris, Elvis Mitchell and A.O. Scott of the Times, etc.). He has a terrifically lo-fi site, The Man Who Viewed Too Much, that lists all the movies he's seen. The movie list......

The New York Times has film critic Molly Haskell write about film going now versus then, then being the 60s and 70s, really. It's a lovely article, and, for me, made lovelier by her mention of husband, Andrew Sarris, my favorite film critic. She writes that they met at a screening of "Les Bonnes Femmes," the 1960 Claude Chabrol film. Sarris, in the class I took with him at Columbia (International Film 1960-present), screened "Les......